


nom de guerre

by arbitrarily



Category: Utopia (TV 2013)
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Scarification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 16:13:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2157003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is a company man, she is the nation that he serves. 1974-1979: The Assistant erases his name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nom de guerre

**Author's Note:**

> General spoilers through S2 of _Utopia_.
> 
> ALSO: [A mix](http://8tracks.com/arbitrarym/names-of-people-we-d-be-together), for your listening pleasure if you're so inclined!

 

> Sometimes I wonder if you’re mythologizing me   
> like I do you.  
> OF MONTREAL

 

 

 

 

 

Each head around the table is bowed, save for hers.

 

 

 

 

**1 9 9 0 .**

 

 

The Home Secretary is sweating. He dabs at his upper lip with a white handkerchief and then clears his throat, a dainty, nervous little noise. He wants to shut The Network down. That’s why he brought them here, the two of them: he wants to sever all ties.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, countries had been dropping their affiliation with them left and right, easily cowed into a vision of a safe future, one no longer determined by a divide between East and West. A divide remains, and the two of them know this. It is the present versus the future, and with men like the Home Secretary at the helm, he can see it only as a losing battle.

So can she. Seated directly across from the Home Secretary, Milner’s chin is lifted, imperious, as she listens.

He is seated beside her; he stretches his legs out in front of him beneath the table, relaxed, bored.

“You think without the Soviets we are without enemies?” she interrupts, her eyebrows arched and doubtful. He casts a brief amused glance to her. He can hear her voice in his head. There she would say, a sibilant hiss: “This does not end. This never ends.

“We are our own enemy.”

The Home Secretary sputters. “The amount of money we have sunk into these efforts for the last fifteen-fucking-years –– Milner, it cannot stand.”

“You’re worried about money?” Milner emphasizes the first word, the accusation heavy in the air. His chin tucked, he lifts his eyes to the Home Secretary, the ghost of a grin on his lips. Over the years of his term, the Home Secretary has been the generous recipient of a heavy stipend, paid out by Corvadt, the payment of which ensured by Milner and himself.

To his credit, the Home Secretary flushes. “I am worried that without the Soviets we are without a mandate to do what ... what you do.” He shifts in his chair, clearly uncomfortable. They always get uncomfortable with that part, with what they do.

“Well, now you’re humming a different tune,” Milner drawls. “Though you remain confused. An absence of power does not equal an absence of weapons. It merely means there are more hands reaching out, grabbing for them.”

The Home Secretary frowns. The remaining men around the table keep their eyes down, silent witnesses, not a part of this conversation.

“The Network has a plan then?” he asks, still skeptical.

“We are always looking and moving forward.” Milner pitches it like the party line it is, empty and ominous all at once. “My assistant will provide the details,” she says, rising from the table. The heads raise in unison, all watching her.

The details, that’s him.

He stands, too. He extracts the file from the briefcase, prepares to spread the photographs out across the table, so many possible positions of incrimination. When he speaks, it will be only in the language of threats. This is the most tedious part of the job. The results are always the same: the bright spark of fear in their eyes, clenched mouths as if they can perhaps choke down on their panic, that stoicism will make this better. It won’t: only compliance will.

They all watch Milner’s exit, but then, so does he. Her heels echo against the floor, her light hair knotted at the base of her skull. The door closes behind her.

When she had stopped being red he had expected to love her less.

Funny. He had thought the same about his name: he would stop when she took it from him.

He clears his throat.

“Gentlemen,” The Assistant says, his hands spread open. He has their attention now. He is the only one who smiles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i. **accident with wider consequences.**

 

  

The projector is still running but there is nothing on the screen save for a trembling white light. It is 1974 and Carvel has gone, returned home. Milner and The Assistant remain, the two together in the dark and empty lab.

“Janus.” It’s all he says, slow and almost mocking, as if he is teaching himself the name. Milner looks to him, her gaze searching, waiting for him to tell her what she expects him to: that this is not what they had in mind. That Carvel’s plan is not their plan, that whatever comes next will alter the course of everything. It’s something to think they hold the future in their hands, that if they’re not careful rather than cradle it they will crush it.

She expects his dissent, so he remains quiet, watching her in return.

“Christ. All right then. Out with it,” she finally says. “Just say it.”

He arches an eyebrow and she reflects the gesture back, amplified. “Even if you have no wish to hear what I might have to say?”

She crosses her arms over her chest as she begins to pace. “If you are questioning this –– if you are questioning us –– then I need to know. Then you need to tell me that, right now.”

He rolls his eyes. They both possess their own unique flair for the dramatic, but she is always prone to wander into the realm of melodrama. “I’m not questioning this or you or me, but rather, the Josef Mengele currently in our employ.”

Milner snorts, stops pacing. “That’s not going to happen. He’s not like _that_. He’s –– ” She halts abruptly and considers the blank screen, the whirring of the projection filling the lab with white noise. “He doesn’t view people the way we do,” she says, her voice quiet. “It’s like ... he’s above them. Above us. Looking down. Like it’s that much easier for him to arrange and rearrange us to match his vision.”

He crosses his arms and leans his hip into the table.

“Come now,” he chides. “You’re not nearly pious enough to be a zealot.”

She looks up at him sharply. “And you’re not clever enough to know what you’re talking about.”

“And are you?” He chuckles to himself, but her face is still severe. The bright light from the projector has cast shadows onto her, hollowing out her face, leaving her all eyes and hard angles.

His voice is crisp but calm when he asks, “Why is it that you think I’m here? To what exactly do you presume I’ve pledged allegiance.”

She cocks her hip, her hand braced against it. She looks so smug, so knowing, still a specter looming in the dark.

“I thought that much was obvious to both of us.”

 

 

 

 

 

The first time The Assistant hears Philip Carvel’s name is two months prior.

The night of the blackouts, the night of the party he did not attend, Milner comes to his flat.

He watches from the window as she shuts the car door. The car drives away; he spies Tom slumped in the backseat. Her face is flushed when he lets her in, manic excitement radiating off of her. She’s electric, the energy near tangible. It reminds him of early days, when the two of them were the closest things to strangers to each other they could possibly be, which is to say, hardly unfamiliar at all.

The Assistant greets her barefoot, still wearing his slacks and his shirt, no tie, his sleeves rolled.

“Good, you’re awake,” she says with that grin.

“I am now.” Milner laughs, a quick hand at his elbow as she sidles past him, spilling out into his small kitchen. She grabs for the bottle of whiskey he keeps above the sink.

“I’ve just come from the most dreadful party, but.” She pauses there, her mouth still parted as if she does not have the words. “I’ve found –– **[REDACTED]** , he’s exactly what we’ve been looking for. He’s a fucking genius. He’s _the_ fucking genius.”

This is when he learns Philip Carvel’s name. This is when everything changes.

 

 

 

 

 

Philip Carvel is Milner’s pet project which in turn becomes his.

The Assistant spends his time investigating. He uses his skills and his resources to dig up any and all dirt on a mad scientist, his Eastern European wife with the wide frowning mouth, their cluttered yet homey flat, the fat baby with fists for hands.

He comes calling when he knows Carvel is with Milner, an unintended swap of sorts.

Brosca opens the door with obvious dread, as if he is a man she has been expecting even if she has no idea the kind of man he truly is. He gives her a false name. He tells her he is there to talk about Philip and her eyes are sad.

He enters their home, taking care to step over the abandoned stuffed toy in the hall.

“He has done something bad,” Brosca had said at the door, less question and more statement, seeking validation.

It’s a rabbit, one ear torn and missing.

 

 

 

 

 

“What did you think?” Milner asks after.

“You’ve met her,” he says. They are sat at her kitchen table, a bottle of red wine open but only she is drinking.

Her mouth tilts in one corner, like a thread stitched through, pulled up and tight. “I have. We had dinner. She sat there.” She indicates the empty chair at the table with a nod of her head.

There is never any excess movement from him, everything regimented and purposeful (a little toy soldier, Milner had called him once, and when he failed to find the humor in that she had only laughed harder), but he finds himself drumming his fingers against the table. “She doesn’t know, what Philip does. What we do. But she worries.” He doesn’t say that Brosca is her own canary down the mineshaft, that he can tell that she smells it already: that something is horribly wrong. That something will only get worse. He doesn’t need to. Milner’s smile is small, as involuntary a gesture as she offers, and directed at both him and herself.

“Yes, she has that weakness.” She pauses. “I liked her.”

“Yes, she is lovely,” he says without interest. “She fed me scones.”

“And how were they?”

“Dry.”

Another pause stretches. A clock mounted on the wall ticks, measured and forbidding. Her house is empty, made of glass and metal, all things sharp. He pictures Tom, and if he is picturing Tom, then he is picturing him drunk. He stumbles, he trips, so many sharp edges, and then, so much blood. It is easy to picture and he pictures it often, without menace and without ill will.

“The boy is a curiosity,” he says.

“His son,” she whispers, –– without menace. Without ill will. Like she has lost something she never had.

He thinks that is a weakness, too.

 

 

 

 

 

And later, so much later, Milner will look him in the eye and she will say, “Philip Carvel is mine.” She will say this to him more than once.

Protection, he presumes, is a kind of love. He does not think she is wrong, but for however much Carvel belongs to her she is not Carvel’s.

“I find I don’t much care for you like this, Milner,” he will say. “Soft-hearted. Not a flattering look.”

And she will say, “You do not speak to me like that,” all biting teeth. “Who do you think are. Who do you think I am? I am Mr. Rabbit,” she will snarl, mocking and cruel.

The Assistant will step forward, he will crowd her space, make her look up at him as he is always looking up at her. The only thing he ever sees in a room is her.

“As am I,” he will whisper. “As am I.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ii. **blood, marrow, gristle, bone.**

 

 

Franco Corelli, the famous opera singer, hosts a party in Berlin. It’s 1975. The Assistant kills two men in an ornate powder room; the splatter of brain matter blends with the pink brocade wallpaper and beneath the heady stench of potpourri is gunpowder, blood and a spilled glass of champagne.

“CIA,” he tells Milner in the hall, the bathroom door shut behind him, his palm sweaty against the brass doorknob. He adjusts his cufflinks. She reaches and straightens his bow tie, the wall behind her painted a deep red to match her. “It’s been dealt with.”

“Good.”

As they walk away, as they exit the party, Franco’s recorded voice swelling and echoing, the gravel crunching under their feet, she rests her hand on his forearm. She squeezes once. “I am so lucky to have met you.”

It will be the most sentimental thing she ever says to him.

 

 

 

 

 

No official biography for **[REDACTED]** will ever exist, but if one did, it would note the fact he got his start in espionage some time in the mid-1960s.

He worked his way quietly up the ladder at MI5. He proved himself a weapon: neat and destructive and able to achieve any desired result, able to be forgotten.

He met her early in her career at MI5. She was the girl with the red hair and the harsh mouth, that husky voice that always demanded she get what she wanted.

She was a good shot. He taught her to be better.

 

 

 

 

 

The first time he saw her she was wearing a gas mask. Deep in the bowels of the building where the work they did not speak of save for in code lived (always names belonging to mythology, Greek or Roman, always names whose future was foretold by their past), there she was.

He had watched her from the hall, behind the glass. He still had a cut over his eyebrow, a pair of bruised ribs, from his last mission two weeks previous –– Guangdong. His return had landed him with the new team tasked to deal with threats pertaining to biowarfare. She had been tasked with the same.

Errant strands of red hair had escaped from the messy bun atop her head, falling over the mask. When she removed it, lines imprinted along her cheeks, she had caught his eye, watched him carefully. She had batted her hair away, a tiny grin growing to fill her face.

“I know who you are,” she had said, after.

“And I you,” he said.

He found working with her natural. For as headstrong and bullish as she proved he found that she could not only accurately predict every move he made, but she could complement him. They were well-matched; they made each other smarter and brighter, that much more lethal.

“You know what I know,” she said to him one night. That funny cockeyed smile of hers stretched. She had looked so pleased with herself. They were in a pub, perched on two bar stools. The rain had turned to sleet, and despite the warmth of the pub she still had her trench coat wrapped wet around her, the ends of her hair wet and dark and curling.

“And that is?” She watched him take a pull from his pint and licked her own lips.

“There’s a story,” she began, “about two rabbits. They’re being chased through the forest and they run and they run, and the two manage to elude their hunter, but they know this is only temporary and they know that they’ll be found. The first rabbit turns to the second and after lamenting their probable doom he has an idea. He tells the second rabbit he knows where he can hide. The second rabbit asks, where? and the first says, here, inside of me. When the first rabbit runs past their hunter, their hunter will be waiting for the second, unaware the two have become one. Together, one rabbit hidden inside the other, they can escape. Together there is hope.”

He did not ask her what she meant. He knew. She looked at him like she was inside him already, like she believed in him, and that in kind allowed him to believe in her –– to find a place inside of her to make his own.

She leaned forward. “Together we can do so much. We can do _better_. We can fix all this.”

That rabid idealism tempered by absolute desperation, he had seen it so clearly, even then. She had built herself a reputation based on this already, her passion, her determination, her deadly seriousness. He had a reputation, too. They called him Jack Frost (even then he had not been known by his given name), always with a wry smile as if a sense of humor might keep that cold cruelty of his at bay.

Even then, even knowing himself as this, he was intrigued by her.

 “Together,” he had repeated, just enough skepticism to provide him a potential out. She saw right through it. She grinned, triumphant.

“You know, I’m not worried about any of this,” she said, casually conspiratorial. “Biopreparat, anthrax, weaponized ebola. That doesn’t scare me.”

“Then what are you scared of?” She leaned in even closer to him. Their knees bumped, her leg between his own.

“I’m afraid of mathematics. Exponential numbers. The world is getting smaller while we grow bigger and bigger. A crowded train station with nowhere to go, everyone pushed to lay down on the tracks. That’s not even where we’re headed –– it’s where we are now.”

“Eloquent,” he said, a wry grin, but he found he did not disagree.

He had thought she was incredibly young.

He had, incorrectly, assumed that working long enough with him and for the people he worked for she would lose that shine to her. She didn’t.

He’s never been so happy to be proven wrong. He’s never allowed anyone to prove him wrong as her.

 

 

 

 

 

He is the opposite of Milner: a man with no memory. She is a woman with too much. For as long as he has known her, she has poured it into him. Made him hold it all for her. His memories are not his own: they’re hers. Pain is owned and traded likewise.

Milner had wanted more than a shadow for herself, something fuller fleshed than a right hand, moving in sync with the rest of her body.

So he gave her his body and took with it scars.  

He knows she has scars of her own.

He has seen them, touched them, traced the healed edges with the blunt end of a fingernail (later, later, so much later, impossible to imagine now, but later, impossible then too), watched her shiver but never squirm away.

He knows her history. Her history is his history. He knows the things they did to her and he knows the things he wishes she would do to him.

 

 

 

 

 

The wound takes long to heal. He finds himself often resting a hand to his stomach, without intent, as if he subconsciously believes he can press the pain deep enough inside himself it can be forgotten.

From behind her desk, Milner is watching him. It is 1979.

“You’ll never be able to fuck anyone again,” she says slowly. “Your secret would be out.” His eyes narrow. She is in a goading mood, hungry for a knife to twist. She has that look to her, the same one she would get whenever Tom would speak of him or to him in her company. For as long as **[REDACTED]** knew Tom, Tom was interested in finding a woman for him. All Tom ever dealt in was drink and sex –– his self-professed gift to the masses.

“What are you doing?” Milner had asked Tom.

“I’m trying to get the poor boy a decent shag at the least,” Tom said, gesturing across the table to him. The Assistant was there uninvited, having stopped by with an update (on Moscow, on a dead philosophy professor, on a curious reporter; the world was always changing and there were always updates) for Milner. Tom had forced him to stay to first dinner and then scotch.

The Assistant had understood then, watching Milner’s tight mouth, the way her eyes stayed trained on him and not Tom: she would not share. That loneliness was the price to belonging to her.

He had given his glass of scotch a shake, the two ice cubes rattling. “Not to worry, Tom,” he had said, his own gaze never leaving Milner’s. “A man can take care of himself.”

Now in her office he holds her stare again. “I could fuck you,” he sneers. “You know the truth.”

She laughs, hot and deep in her throat. “You could,” she says, and it almost sounds like a challenge, even more like an agreement.

When he does fuck her (later, _later_ ), he wants to destroy her. We all wish to destroy the things we worship. The temple sacked, the relics ruined, the Bible torn to shreds.

To worship requires its own shackles and its own allegiance. **[REDACTED]** knows this.

He does not fuck her until the fall of 1979. Then, she will already be destroyed, albeit by another man.

 

 

 

 

 

He first meets Tom –– long before anyone says the name Philip Carvel –– in Milner’s kitchen.

“So, you’re her Girl Friday then, hmm?”

He is taller than Tom and he carries his height well, unlike Tom, who looks as if he is on the verge of curling in upon himself, as if the weight of the full glass in his hand is too much to bear, like the weight of anything beset upon him is always going to be too much.

He doesn’t care for Tom. He finds him sloppy.

He wants to step forward, grab Tom by the collar and haul his face to his. Wants his mouth near where Milner’s has been, tasting that gin stench he can smell even from here, on the other side of the kitchen. He wants to say, “You do not know the first damned thing about me. You do not know who I am.”

He wants to say, “You do not know who she is either.”

He does none of these things. Instead he adopts an attempt at a smile, enjoys its failure, the way Tom’s gin-soaked mouth goes sour, gapes like a fish, thirsty.

“Someone has to see to her dirty work,” he says, calm and slow. When he smiles this time he does not bare teeth; he keeps them to himself. “I suppose it’s as they say: behind every great woman ... ”

“A great man?” Tom finishes, the glass still poised beneath his bottom lip, cheeks flushed, tie crooked. He laughs and it sounds like a startled gasp. “You’re a funny one, aren’t you?” He laughs louder, heartier, as if he is convincing himself of a lie. “Milner!” he calls. “This one’s got jokes!” but Milner does not answer.

Later he will tell Milner that Tom has quite the sense of humor.

She will search his face, something bruised and hurt there he will find he does not understand.

“He said the same of you,” she will say.

 

 

 

 

 

He had been the only witness at her wedding to Tom. His name was scrawled tight and unreadable on that document: WITNESS, Milner’s name above his.

After Tom’s death, after Carvel’s disappearance, after a passage of years where they erase themselves, all documentation of the marriage is destroyed. That piece of paper with both their names on it: gone.

That single photograph, Milner all teeth smiling wide, Tom all hands gripping her tight ––

He is behind them. His eyes are bright and his mouth is flat. He is behind her.

 They destroy that, too.

 

 

 

 

 

After Tom’s death comes the funeral.

He finds her in the her kitchen, Milner at the sink, the water running. There are strangers who mill about, all dressed somber and in black.

“Did you watch?” she says, the question near a whisper. She is not looking at him but her head is turned towards him. Milner the widow: he pictures her wet sweater, the indignant cock of her head, the sickening cast of light in her bathroom.

“Did you see?” The water runs and fills the sink. He had known what came next when he left that night. He had known all along that what Tom really was: a liability. He thinks they are all liabilities to her, even him.

All but Carvel.

The strangers in black murmur apologies to each other, The Assistant and Milner invisible to them, alone.

“I wanted you to see,” she says, so quiet he can barely hear her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iii. **the killing jar.**

 

 

The Assistant found Philip in the lab.

He approached, each footstep echoing, the white coat-clad scientists quiet and reverent as church mice.

He readjusted a beaker on the counter, a neat little row. Philip would not look at him.

They did not like each other. They both knew this. Philip had referred to him multiple times as little more than a jackboot thug, and perhaps that was true. Perhaps that was what he was. He wasn’t offended, not by that.

He was offended by the fact he feared the man. He was offended by the fact he could not trust him, and yet, Milner could.

“Hello, Philip,” he said. He took a step closer.

“I imagine you know why I am here,” he said. Philip’s hands were spread against the black countertop. He said nothing; The Assistant came closer.

“It’s a touch late for doubts now, Philip,” he said, the same way one man might comment on the weather to another. “I’m afraid the time for those has long since passed.”

Philip still would not look at him. In fact, Philip rarely looked at him as they were rarely alone together. Milner was always there, a black hole in the center of any room.

“When?” Philip finally asked, his shoulders hunched. “When was the time?”

The Assistant arched an eyebrow. “When you met her, I suppose. You should have said no,” he said lightly, conversationally. “You should have walked away.”

Philip looked up then and he looked at him, hair unkempt, his eyes mad. “You didn’t.”

The Assistant brushed his jacket back and braced a hand on his hip. “No,” he said. “But then I am not the one with any doubts, save for anything but you.”

 

 

 

 

 

“He is a fucking god,” Milner had said.

If he watches Carvel, then that means he is watching Milner, too. Watching how Milner watches Carvel, the three of them like Russian nesting dolls, The Assistant the only one not enclosed. He is the only one outside, which means he is the only one who truly sees.

For however much Milner may worship Carvel, deify him, love him, she still bodily depends on him.

A partnership: he hides behind her. And then, she hides behind him. Together, one inside the other, Mr. Rabbit wears two faces.

So he watches her. That aquiline nose, ramrod posture, long sloping neck, a neck worth biting down on, catching between your teeth.

Carvel has no idea what to do with a woman. He can manipulate single cells, can manipulate the entire future of the human race, but one lone woman and he is lost.

 

 

 

 

 

Brosca had stopped by the lab, pregnant and beaming. Philip held her face in his hands and he kissed her forehead. At a distance, Milner stood beside The Assistant, stony in her silence, her arms folded over her chest.

She caught his eye when she glanced up at him.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she spat out. “Like you pity me.”

He turned his attention back to Philip and his wife. They were laughing.

“I don’t pity you,” he said. “I pity him.”

Milner laughed. “ **[REDACTED]** , darling, you foolish fucking bastard. You cannot pity a god, not when you’re merely a man.”

Her mouth curled. She said, “He does not even think of you at all.”

 

 

 

 

 

Milner’s flat is freezing. The early months of 1979 are met with cold weather, blizzards, deep snow, heated tempers.

He pockets her key and kicks the snow from his feet onto the front mat before deciding to toe his shoes off. He steps in melting slush, his socks now wet and he curses quietly.

A window in the kitchen is wide open. The frigid air gusts in, so he closes it. Peppy Motown music plays from the radio in the front room. A bottle of Glenfiddich is open next to the sink. He lifts it, finds it near empty. He shakes his head, curses again. In the hall a sweater has been dropped. He picks it up and drapes it over a kitchen chair. Sometimes it is as if without Tom, Milner has a certain deficit of behavior to fill.

Light drifts out from under the bathroom door at the end of the dark hall. The music follows him.

 _You know that I love you –– I can’t help myself ––_  

He raps his knuckles against the door. “I let myself in.” He hears a splash on the other side. “Are you decent?” he calls.

Another splash. “Milner?”

“Open the fucking door, **[REDACTED]** ,” she says.

This is after Carvel’s first betrayal: he names her as Mr. Rabbit.

No, this is after Carvel’s second betrayal. His first was Jessica.

He opens the door.

 

 

 

 

 

She’s drunk. He finds her drunk.

He finds Milner in her underwear in the tub, the water sloshing against the sides when she bends her knees. She holds a glass of scotch to her chest. Her hair is wet and limp; there are dark circles under her eyes and her pale skin is stark against the black underwear, her breasts visible through the wet fabric. He is uncomfortable with what he can only describe as a display of weakness from her. He runs a hand through his hair, bracing his hand at the base of his neck, his other hand at his hip, his gaze fixed on the sink instead of her.

“You’ve found him?” she asks, her voice an unused croak.

He sighs. “Yes. Rome.”

“Rome,” she repeats. The water splashes again, but he does not look to her. He looks to his own reflection in the mirror instead.

“I don’t understand,” she says, “ _why_. Why would he do that?”

He’s never heard her sound so lost. He glances over to her.

“I’m not interested in his motivations,” he says tightly. “I’m interested in what we do next.”

Milner looks up at him, her eyelashes wet, her glass clutched just below her chin in both hands.

“What would you have me do?” she asks.

“I would have you kill him.”

And there. She has turned that look of utter hatred on to him for the first time.

It’s all right. Sometimes he hates her too. The way you hate the twin you shared a birth with, and following that, a life, realizing in bright painful moments of truth that nothing is your own. It’s all shared.

“I can’t kill him. We can’t kill him. We need him.” Her voice echoes off the tile. “We don’t even know if Janus works!”

He moves closer to her and the tub, stepping over her discarded skirt.

“Then we kill the daughter. We torture him. We burn the world. We lock him in a cell with a fucking microscope and have him do his fucking job.” He pauses. For just a beat he thinks he can detect fear in her eyes. “You and I both know there are a great many ways to kill a man yet allow him to remain useful.”

She drains her glass, slides lower in the tub. Water drips from her chin.

She looks away from him, presses her fingers to her eye. Her chest expands as she takes a deep breath. He can see the striation of her ribs between her breasts, her nipples through her bra –– he doesn’t know how not to look at her.

“I’m terribly tired,” and that’s when her voice cracks. “I’m so fucking tired.”

Neither of them has ever been known for their patience; he can feel his own expiring. He forces himself to look away, down at the tiled floor.

“Get up,” he says, but he sounds tired, too.

Milner doesn’t move and he doesn’t repeat himself.

He comes closer. He takes the empty glass from her hands and sets it down in the basin of the sink. He removes his coat, places it on the hook on the back of the door alongside her robe. He rolls his sleeves to his elbows, and then he pulls her out.

He grabs her under the arms. He lifts and she lets him, light and limp as his hand slips down to her lower back to support her on her feet. She wraps an arm around his neck, her wet body soaking through his clothes. She shivers, and then, so does he.

“Milner,” he says and she does not respond.

Instead, she surprises him. She clings to him, her fingers biting into his shoulder, as she begins to cry. He hates surprises. He hates any deviation from the expected. Water puddles beneath them soaking his already wet socks. His shirt sticks to his skin, and Milner rests her head against his chest as she cries.

He cups the back of her head, tentative, unsure. He finds it peculiar to be so gentle with his hands. So gentle with her.

His chin brushes against the top of her head. She’s stopped crying but her breathing is shaky and unsteady; he can feel the heat of her breath at the bottom of his throat.

He says her name again. He calls her Milner, and she goes sharp against him, says no, so he says Letan, and she sags into him, and now she is that girl he met so long ago, now he is that boy, now they know there is no turning back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
_interlude._ **long before bodies were invented.**

 

 

There is blood on the cuff of his shirt.

The two sit side-by-side in the backseat of the chauffeured car. Neither speaks, neither looks to the other.

This is after Rome. After he was carved and bled. This is when everywhere they go they leave in their wake a wreck of carnage and collateral damage. They do not yet know this is their future.

The night is dark as they drive, Milner’s profile flashing in and out of view as they pass beneath lit street lamps. He worries the rust-stained smudge at his wrist with his thumb. The steep price of failed negotiations, he thinks. The safehouse had been easy enough to find; answers from the KGB officer holed up there not so much.

“Immunity.” The officer had kept saying that, warped by his accent over and over again as Milner had circled him, as if he was teaching them a new definition of the word.

“You’re mistaken,” Milner had said quietly. “There is nothing in this world that could make you immune from us.”

That had been when The Assistant stepped in, a knife clasped in hand. He loosened his tie with his other hand.

“Have you heard of Mr. Rabbit?” he asked lightly, conversationally, and though this KGB officer would not beg, there was a small flicker of fear. This was The Assistant’s opening.

In the end, he had no useful answers and no more blood to give. Milner had watched the entire time, her eyes fixed on him as opposed to the slumped body.

In the car, now, it is unexpected when she touches him. She touches his thigh first. He starts at that, shifts to sit up straighter, and when he looks down at her hand, he finds she is looking at her hand, too. The hand is innocent enough, her touch light, but her face is anything but.

Milner slides closer to him across the bench of the seat and her hands are at his chest, her knees pressed against his thigh. She undoes one button, just under the hollow of his throat. He frowns, catches her eye. She shakes her head, slightly, as if to say, _don’t_ , and, _let me_ , all in the same breath. And he does, he lets her, unsure what she is going to do to him.

She opens his shirt and he twitches, the air in the car cool. She cocks her head as she studies him, and then, just as before, she reaches, the tips of her fingers barely brushing the healing scar. He sucks in a quavering breath and she sighs soft as she bends closer.

She presses her mouth against the scar, hot and wet, tasting, kissing him. He exhales through his nose, watches the dark road spread ahead of them. He can feel her fingers rubbing against him, through his trousers. He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. Her eyes meet his again, but only for a beat. As if whatever is about to pass between them is private, belonging to each of them separately as individuals. He watches her, his breathing coming fast now, as she makes quick work of his belt, the rasp of his zipper almost as deafeningly loud as his pulse in his ears. Her grip is light and loose around his cock, teasing, fingers brushing down the length of him, her other hand tracing lines etched in red against the heated skin of the mark.

She barely has to do anything to him.

The driver is a good driver: he does not look at them. He does not look even when **[REDACTED]** ’s voice goes high and weak as Milner presses first the flat of her hand to his scar and then, that open pink mouth around the head of his cock. The hand hurts, makes his eyes water, and he pushes deeper into her mouth, the contrast staggering. She makes a wet, choking sound, which only makes his head fall back, his hands flex into fists. He digs his fingers into her hair and she moans around him, loud, and he echoes her.

He comes hard and noisy, pulling at her hair, thrusting into her mouth, her hand still spread over the mark, over her name.

They let the driver live three days. He saw the scar. He is a good driver but he talks. The legend of Mr. Rabbit grows. He dies with one bullet to the head, neat despite the blood spray, the shattered skull. They leave him by the side of the road.

The Assistant takes the driver’s seat, Milner beside him. His hands smell like gunpowder; the steering wheel creaks under his tight grip.

“Impossible to find good help,” he says. Milner rests her head against the seat and grins up at him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iv. **the gravediggers strike.**

 

 

“We need a story,” Milner said.

It is important to remember that he offered. He offered himself to her.

 

 

 

 

 

If you wish to create your own myth, then you must first become impossible.

You must disappear.

They build the story of Mr. Rabbit out of half-truths.

He had been in Guangdong once. He had been left for dead. He had killed his way out.

 This had been when Milner met him.

 

 

 

 

 

“What did they do to you?” she had asked. Her fingers brushed his eyebrow, ignoring any social boundaries as she reached for him; he winced.

His own eyes were wide as he watched her, as he let her touch him. It stung; so did she.

 

 

 

 

 

They are here to see The Diplomat.

It is fall, 1979, and it is a party, some country estate once owned by former nobility now embroiled in scandal or debt or reform, all three.

This is in the after. Three Mile Island serves as their own demarcation line, dividing time neatly. In the after they have ceded a great many things. Philip. Jessica. The belief they could control any of this.

Milner and The Assistant corner The Diplomat in the study. His name, The Assistant finds, is unimportant. So many bureaucrats, all of them replaceable, all interchangeable.

Milner stands in front of the desk, The Assistant behind her; The Diplomat sits. She is clad in a long white wrap dress, he in a tux. There is a four-piece orchestra playing but in the study you cannot hear a thing. This is not an accident.

Milner is patient and calm, as she speaks. There are always things they need and there are always men who can be convinced to give it to them. This time, though, The Diplomat remains unmoved.

The Diplomat says: “I don’t know who you two think you are ... ”

 **[REDACTED]** has enough: he slams The Diplomat’s head down onto the desk. He holds the sharp point of a letter opener to his ear canal. Can feel the man trembling under him, wrenches the man’s shoulder that much more and is rewarded with a yelp, the smallest of nips at his ear with the blade. The blood pearls and slowly drops down his cheek.

“He’s listening,” The Assistant says.

“Good. As I was saying,” Milner says.

 

 

 

 

 

The Diplomat leaves them, a hand clutched to his ear, an equally terrified and disgruntled string of profanity cut off by the shutting of the door.

Milner and The Assistant remain, alone in the study.

“You think he’ll cooperate?” she asks him.

The Assistant shrugs small. “He’ll consider it, at the least.”

“Yes,” she says, but it’s as if she is saying it to herself. He drops the letter opener back onto the desk, a barely discernible smudge of blood at the tip. Milner watches him. The way she looks at him puts him on edge, like they are two lions pacing and sharing a cage.

She perches on the side of the desk, the slit up the side of her dress baring her leg.

“Come here,” she says quietly. And he does.

She looks up at him. He thinks he can see that same rapturous glow in her he thought she devoted only to Carvel. It lands like a punch to the gut for him.

“I want to see it again.” And he knows: the scar is a token for her. He is slow and deliberate as he unknots his tie, all too aware of her elevated breathing, how her cheeks flush as he unbuttons his shirt, the avid and worshipful way she watches him. It’s symbiotic, he thinks, as she traces the mark with her finger, his stomach muscles fluttering under her touch, a quick breath in. He worships her and she worships the physical evidence of this. He does not touch her and she does not touch anywhere but the scar.

Milner looks at him as if she is looking at herself. She reaches up, brushes a strand of hair that has fallen across his forehead back. Her fingers drift down, cup his face, her thumb passing over the top swell of his lip.

“Mr. Rabbit,” she murmurs.

She meets his eye. She settles back against the desk and reaches for the tie at her side. She unknots it, still watching him. Her dress opens, her legs open. Her breasts are bare underneath; he can feel his heart hammering against his ribs.

“Come here,” she says again, quieter this time.

He touches her now. He has to touch her now. His hands on her parted thighs, pushing higher, spreading her open for him.

He thinks there have always been flashes of desire between them, or if not desire, then flashes of proof –– prove that your body belongs to me, prove your body is my own. She never says it, but it’s there. The thought is in her, so it’s in him, too.

Her fingers are mean and insistent as they grab at the hair at the nape of his neck, bringing him down to her. She will not kiss him so he will not offer, but he bites at the exposed bit of neck, the dip of her throat, the branched bow of her collarbone, lower. His weight against her pushes her back onto the desk. His hands on her breasts, his mouth around a pale pink nipple, just enough teeth to make her gasp, make him have to hold her down, her hips rising to meet his.

He fucks her on the desk. He hisses as he enters her, can feel the heel of her palm against his shoulder as her hands scramble over him, a needy sound caught in the back of her throat.

He fucks her. His pale skin, those red lines, her red hair, that red mouth. It seems wrong to touch her, like he is taking something he has no right to ever encounter.

Sacrilege, is what it is. The desk like an altar, like she is giving herself as an offering, her most loyal servant, and that’s a kind of love too, isn’t it.

He can feel her pulse around him, her neck arched, head thrown back.

Prove that you belong to me, she does not say. Her hair spreads against the dark wood of the desk like an opened wound as she comes.

She does not need to say a thing.

 

 

 

 

 

“Did you weep?” Milner does not look at him when she asks the question. “When you bled,” she adds, though it is hardly necessary.

He did weep, but he does not admit to this. They do not lie to each other, out of necessity and out of what others might call respect, but neither is prone to admit their failings without some careful prodding. Not without, he thinks ruefully, the cattle prod. They both demand a shock to the system before baring an weakness.

“Did it hurt?” This question comes to him closer, at a lower pitch, fascination writ in her voice.

He lifts his gaze to her but he does not say a word.

Immediately after, Milner had been different with him. Not gentle, but reverent. She looked to him the way he knows he has always looked to her: like she is an impossibility, both potential salvation and ruin –– the two twinned, intractable. That look faded from her, as all things do: the bruising, the bandages, the blood.

The pain does not subside though; it finds a place to live inside of him, right alongside her.

 

 

 

 

 

His one regret: he could not wield the knife himself.

He had considered it and knew it to be impossible. For one, the angle would be wrong. For another –– for another required questioning his nerve. Whether he was capable of finishing the job. He found it was a question he had no desire to answer.

He had a friend do it. Tony Q. Tony Q had a tattoo parlor that beneath it, in the basement, regular betting nights would often devolve into games of Russian Roulette. They did the cutting in the basement. Tony Q did not do a good job of keeping the place clean. The stench was still there, a stench that anyone else might attribute to rotting meat, water run with too much copper, too much iron and metal, but he knew. Between two steel kegs he thought he spied a small fragment of bone. Skull, he assumed.

Tony Q had steady hands and he made quick work of it. **[REDACTED]** ’s own belt was clenched between his teeth and he bit down. He was silent. He breathed steady. He studied the piece of bone. He humored himself by imagining attending one of these late-night card games gone awry. He knew what it felt like to hold a loaded gun, point it at a man’s head. He had no idea what it felt like when both the hand and the head were his own.

Later, he returned to his place. He lived in a building that was completely anonymous, completely forgetful, much like himself. Every person who resided there lived a double life.

He spent the night in the bathroom, his long body slumped on the cool white tiles. He hurt. He drank from a bottle of Jameson until he dreamed.

In his dreams it was Milner with the knife. They were in his bathroom and she was crouched over top him, one hand flat and steady in the middle of his chest while the other began to carve. He cried as she worked, his mouth and his hands and his flesh open to her as he said, “Take this, it’s all for you,” and she had, lapping up the blood like a cat (the Chinese symbol for “cat” has even more lines than “rabbit,” he should find gratitude in that). When he woke his face was wet, the front of his shirt soaked through with his blood. He winced as he moved and then decided better of it. He closed his eyes, against the white and the red, always, always, all that red. He found he did not feel so alone: the pain was like another person in the room with him, someone he could wrap his body around. All that red. All he saw and felt was red.

 

 

 

 

 

He killed Tony Q. Shot him in the head and left him in the basement.

 **[REDACTED]** paid him first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

v. **an obituary for the anonymous dead.**

 

 

Philip Carvel’s absence has rendered Milner unpredictable. Her temper flares without warning, all too readily eager to turn allies into enemies. She is an unstable element. He is something akin to disappointed.

At a quiet reception for the new government leadership, Milner throws a cocktail in a Labour Party leader’s face. Her face is flushed as she shouts what sound like embarrassingly idle threats to anyone who doesn’t know them.

The Assistant grabs her by the wrist, her skin cold. He guides her away, towards the small coatroom near the entrance.

“You need –– ”

She laughs, bitter. “You don’t tell me what I _need_.”

Violence has always been his method of making a person understand. She is no different.

He holds her against the wall in the coat check, surrounded by furs and overcoats still reeking of the wet London spring. Milner’s face is lost in her own mass of red hair and the better part of a well-brushed mink wrap. She looks wild. Feral, a beast that demands both his fealty and the whip.

“We will find him.” His voice is firm and almost gentle. He hates himself for allowing that small concession. He is always allowing things for her. Small things that swell and grow into greater things until he has given her everything and still considers this offer not enough. It’s how he got here. She stepped down onto a path, burning with the brightest hatred, the noblest of intentions (“we are going to save the world,” she had said, and he believed her, believed every word), and he stepped with her –– there was nowhere else he wanted to go.

“Don’t lie to me. Not you.”

 _Not you_. So he cups her face in his hand and she closes her eyes and she’s beautiful and there will be the fog waiting when they leave, their own coats damp, strands of that red hair still sticking to her wet mouth, strands of hair that had stuck to his own.

She tastes bitter. That is beautiful, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He thinks about when he first met her. She said the only thing she feared was mathematics. Here they are, a product of subtraction. All she has is one.

She comes by his flat. 1980, and Carvel is gone, Jessica is gone. In a very vital and very real way, a part of Milner has gone as well. Gone in pursuit, always searching, always missing.

“What are you –– ”

“Shut up,” she says, but she does not say it unkindly. She slides her coat off her shoulders and lets it drop to the floor, leaves it there.

She strolls over to him and grabs the front of his shirt and she kisses him. All teeth and tongue, she kisses him meanly, him towering over her as he leans into her. He kisses her back.

 

 

 

 

 

He pushes Milner down, naked, onto the bed, on her stomach. His body is atop hers, kissing and biting at her shoulder, Milner in his bed, the spill of red from her, his fingers, tangling, pulling. He presses his knee between her legs, spreading them, her arms bent, a hand reaching back to drag through his hair as he mouths down the side of her ribs to her hip, his hand between her legs, finding her wet, hearing her choke on a word like _please_.

He can see her ribcage under her skin, she’s so small. In his hands she is something fragile. She is something he could break. She forgets that power because she thinks it is not her own. But it is, it is hers, everything of his is hers.

He wraps an arm around her, pulls her up to her hands and knees. Her head drops forward. It’s like she can’t stop making noise, like she’s already at that point outside herself. He bites at the back of her neck, her hair hanging in her face as she lifts her head back up to him, moaning quietly. He’s still wearing his trousers, but he rubs himself between her parted legs, the arm wrapped around her middle groping her breast before rising to her throat. Milner says, “please,” again.

He drops her back down to the bed and she rolls to face him as he undoes his belt. She watches him with hooded eyes, her body twisted, torso flat, hips turned, arms splayed out like a mockery of Jesus on the cross. He pushes his trousers down past his hips, his cock jutting out, that scar hideous at the center of him, and they both stare at each other, at each other’s bodies. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, her body laid out for him, and he reaches for it, grabs her by the hip, the bone sharp and smooth under his hand, and he rolls the rest of her body flat against the mattress. He fits himself between her parted thighs.

He’s slow when he pushes into her, and her entire body bows up and into him. She says what sounds like, _oh_. It’s different from every other time they have touched each other –– a communion, the holiest thing he has ever known. They are always honest with each other but they have never been this open.

He cups her face, grips too tight along her jaw, as he thrusts again. Her arms wrap around him, an elbow at his shoulder blade, her arm bent, fingers buried in his hair, gripping the base of his skull. She’s trembling already, thighs shaking on either side of his hips.

He bucks his hips, the resulting thrusts deep, brutal, and she makes a breathless sound, as if all the air has been pushed out of her, no room for anything inside of her but him.

“Letan.” The name escapes him. Milner inhales sharply.

“Again,” she murmurs. He mouths at the hinge of her jaw, thrusts deeper, says her name.

There was something inevitable about her coming to his flat. He has total control, her body at his mercy –– this is what she wanted. Milner claws at the sheets, their heads at the foot of the bed, feet kicking and pushing the pillows back against the wall.  

They go about torture all wrong, he thinks. Seeking answers. Give a man what he wants but will not admit to wanting, he is yours. There is nothing he would not tell her right now. There is nothing he would not give.

How terrifying.

The rhythm of his hips continues to mount, fucking her hard. Milner (“ _Letan_ ”) gasps again and again and it sounds dangerously like crying, so he kisses her shoulder he kisses her throat he kisses her mouth red ( _all that red_ ). He is hers and she is his, he is hers and she is his, he is hers ––

 

 

 

 

 

A long time ago he had asked Milner: “You never did say –– how did that second rabbit get inside the first?”

Her eyes were dark and her mouth stretched into a small smile, the same that comes with first knowledge and first blood.

“She devoured him,” she said.

 

 

 

 

 

Their bodies are damp with sweat, both still too sensitive, but they keep touching each other. Their mouths and their hands are languid, but that undercurrent of urgency still threatens.

Her hair is heavy and he knots it in a fist as he kisses her mouth open, bites down the column of her throat. Her legs spread open under him again; he’s never known her to be so pliant, so giving. He pushes his fingers inside her, her cunt still wet with the both of them, and she bites her bottom lip, sound trapped sticky in her mouth. She clenches, rolls her hips, curls her leg around him. He should always be inside her. She lives each day inside of him –– it’s only fair: two rabbits masquerading as one.

Milner pulls his face to hers. Their mouths are almost touching and he can still taste her.

She says his name –– his story starts and ends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
_epilogue:_ **the fourth horseman.**

 

 

“I don’t know why you’re doing this to me.”

 

 

 

**1 9 8 3 .**

 

 

In the end there is always pleading.

“I don’t, I don’t know anything. Please, _please_ , you’ve got to believe. I don’t.” The man sobs, no words, just noise. The Assistant allows it. “I don’t even know,” the man begs. His words dissolve.

And then the man asks, a whisper: “Who’s Mr. Rabbit?”

The Assistant raises his head. Dawn is coming on fast, rays of sun casting in through the cracked slats barricading the cabin’s window behind him. He holds a hand to his chest, takes a casual long-legged step forward, watches the man’s bloodied eyes grow wider.

He smiles at the man and the sun grows brighter.

“I am.”

The gun fires, and now he is alone.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The story that Milner tells The Assistant about the two rabbits is lifted from the poem [War of the Foxes](http://www.fishousepoems.org/?p=4636) by Richard Siken and not mine.


End file.
